- Joined
- Jun 19, 2011
- Messages
- 5
In the Sales Floor Signing Reference Guide that outlines how to do signing it stated many procedures that are contrary to how we've been doing them at our store for years. The booklet is dated 3/11 so it's possible many things about the ad has changed recently. (It's also very possible we've just been doing things the wrong way for a looong time) Anyway I'm hoping to get some answers on some of the differences since I am now going to be working on the ad set team in a different capacity than normal.
I'll begin with an outline of how the ad is done at my store. We have it done by the overnight crew. We start the takedown at 10pm when the store closes and will immediately start hanging our signs as soon as that is finished. Softlines is taken down by us but hung by the daytime crew that comes in at 6am so those are just separated from the other signs during prep and given to them to sort, scan and hang on their own. We have a team of usually 3 people hanging the 3x5 and 3x2 signs for the aisles and a 4th person going around and doing all the endcap signing and any 7x11s that are in aisles. That's what I will be taking over and what I am unfamiliar with. I did it some when our store recently went through a remodel to add in a Pfresh area but haven't touched it in months and only did it for a short time anyway.
Let me thank you in advance for the patience this post may require and for any and all answers and insights I receive. With that said let's go get me better informed!
Firstly it says to use the Low Price Promise signs as the default in basically all the endcaps where I will be hanging my signs since we have no Savor Spot and I don't hang the Softlines signs. Before I had been told we could use Expect More Pay Less in all of hardlines on the endcaps if the endcap wasn't on sale. I had been told to use the LPP in the same manner with no real distinction between the two. Also I had been told if some of the endcap products were on sale and others weren't I was to create a multi item 7x11 and use a Sale topper and Sale header as long as I had the highest and lowest priced items covered there with a mix that best represented the endcaps product and the sale. Sometimes a very confusing and hard thing to accomplish in only 6 listings. The booklet clearly states "Promotional topper can only be used if all items on 7x11 price point sign are on promotion". Is that new or just something we've done wrong forever?
Next the guide says with select items on promotion you are to sign items on promotion with 3x5 signs. That's the most major change or difference I can see. We are expected to scan every item on every endcap under UPCS to see if it's on sale so we can then add them to a batch to be printed, scanned and hung later? I know some individual signs arrive in the bundles of signs for the store but not nearly enough to cover all that are on sale in the entire store. Especially not when you consider how often our endcaps change and that the sent signs are printed up way in advance. Worst is the signs that go to endcaps they aren't tied to at all. We have an incredible amount of product on endcaps that just had generic labels printed for them so we can put them there, but there's no POG tied to that endcap. What would be the best way to locate those locations quickly at the end of the night when they are all getting scanned in and hung? Create a batch for every endcap when I'm going around scanning them all?
It also says when a 4' endcap is on promotion to use a 3' information flip book and center it. I thought we used to have or still did have 4' information flip books. Am I wrong/confused about that? It was always encouraged/pushed that we shouldn't use 3' headers on 4' endcaps unless you were completely out of 4' headers. Even then most of the time people would end up using a 3' information flip book and then one of the smaller 1' flip books just so no empty space was shown.
One curious thing in the booklet was where it showed a single price point 3' endcap of vacuum cleaners that had the information flip book displaying EMPL instead of LPP. It said earlier that LPP wasn't to be used in A&A, Savor Spot and sidecaps. Does that imply those are the only areas it's not to be used or there are more? Or does it mean that EMPL and LPP can both be used in the same sections of the store on non promotional end caps and if so how do I know when EMPL is expected? Really confused here if you can't gather.
In the specialty fixtures part of the booklet it shows the glass shelves we now have on a few of our cosmetics endcaps. Currently our labels are underneath the glass shelf several inches further back from the edge of the shelf in a dark grey plastic label strip. The strip holder is basically a piece of plastic folded in half stickied to the endcap. It's so thick and pushed back you can't see the prices even if you hunch down and know where to look. The labels are attached to this ugly holder like stickers themselves on the inside. In the book it has them attached with 1x3' label holders, that look like the ones on peg locations, if the shelf has multiple price points and a 3x5 label holder if the shelf is all the same price point. Which exact fixtures should we be using and is there a good reason we wouldn't have them the way they are in the book? As it is we have cosmetic endcaps that look to have no prices on them. I can't imagine how some people push those endcaps like that or what customers must thing when they're shopping, but my concern is with no label holders I have nothing to hang my sign on. Do I grab an empty one and attach that just for the items on sale and remove the entire label holder when the sale is done? Before when the endcap went on sale we'd make a multi item 7x11 and put it in a stand holder and call it a day.
Another specialty fixture it mentions is the bulk shelved and unshelved endcaps. Typically for stuff like paper towels and soda which they used for their examples of each. It states for shelved bulk endcaps you use an 11x11 for promotion. The only problem we have with that is sometimes when those endcaps get pushed they're pushed quite full and trying to hang a 7x11 on the shelf in the middle usually means a broken 7x11 holder for your trouble. When such an endcap is pushed completely full am I to remove the offending piece of product to make room for the sign to hang down and not be basically folded in half? If so does that apply to our vendor soda endcaps? If so can I stack the soda higher than the middle shelf the sign is hanging from if there's nowhere else to put it? We don't backstock that so where else might it put it if I am to make room and it's that full?
It then tells you that for Fan Central you put the signs in the 7x11 peg sign holder towards the top of the gondola. Are there other areas where it's ok to put 7x11 peg sign holders that high on a panel? I ask because we have some specific locations in the store like the floor mat/rug aisle that doesn't have the normal standard shelves. It has what I guess I'd call baskets or rails that the floor mats sit in and those aren't made for 7x11 holders to clip on to.
In the section for Food signing it shows the meat bunker with red sign fixture similar to the ones on the top of sidecaps and check lane endcaps. Ours doesn't have that fixture. It says for S04 SuperTarget Stores only and while I have no idea what that means, I do know our store has a meat coffin with no fixture to hold the little letter flip books like our check lane endcaps do.
In the cooler/freezer endcap cases it says to use individual 3x5s which we actually were doing but there has been some confusion on whether to fold the flags on them. (I have been but some others have not) I believe this came about because of the problem with folding them in other glass cases in the store where the door was too close and it was hitting the signs when it was being slid open and closed. This doesn't apply here for 2 reasons. The doors swing out instead of sliding and even when closed they're farther away from the signs and not touching. Is it definitive that we should be folding them as I have been saying all along? (there's a picture in there that shows them all folded and even after seeing that people are being allowed to not fold them in that area.)
For our Bike signs it says not to place them on the rail but to insert them into the plastic pouches that hang from the handlebars. My question here is: Is there an easy way to scan a large number of items at once and have it make a batch for ONLY the items on promotion? What I mean is can I do something in my PDA so I can just scan every Bike one after the other without having to hit any extra buttons and then go and print signs for all the bikes that are now on sale? This would apply and save time for the select items on all those endcaps too. I'm praying this exists because using UPCS and adding each item one by one to my batches is soooooo time consuming. If it doesn't exist then Target needs to program that in there. Shouldn't be too hard. You only need it to ask you a question if there's multiple or overlapping promotions that apply to the product the same as when it asks if you want the TPC or Sale sign when you're adding them manually.
Continued below due to 10,000 character limit.
I'll begin with an outline of how the ad is done at my store. We have it done by the overnight crew. We start the takedown at 10pm when the store closes and will immediately start hanging our signs as soon as that is finished. Softlines is taken down by us but hung by the daytime crew that comes in at 6am so those are just separated from the other signs during prep and given to them to sort, scan and hang on their own. We have a team of usually 3 people hanging the 3x5 and 3x2 signs for the aisles and a 4th person going around and doing all the endcap signing and any 7x11s that are in aisles. That's what I will be taking over and what I am unfamiliar with. I did it some when our store recently went through a remodel to add in a Pfresh area but haven't touched it in months and only did it for a short time anyway.
Let me thank you in advance for the patience this post may require and for any and all answers and insights I receive. With that said let's go get me better informed!
Firstly it says to use the Low Price Promise signs as the default in basically all the endcaps where I will be hanging my signs since we have no Savor Spot and I don't hang the Softlines signs. Before I had been told we could use Expect More Pay Less in all of hardlines on the endcaps if the endcap wasn't on sale. I had been told to use the LPP in the same manner with no real distinction between the two. Also I had been told if some of the endcap products were on sale and others weren't I was to create a multi item 7x11 and use a Sale topper and Sale header as long as I had the highest and lowest priced items covered there with a mix that best represented the endcaps product and the sale. Sometimes a very confusing and hard thing to accomplish in only 6 listings. The booklet clearly states "Promotional topper can only be used if all items on 7x11 price point sign are on promotion". Is that new or just something we've done wrong forever?
Next the guide says with select items on promotion you are to sign items on promotion with 3x5 signs. That's the most major change or difference I can see. We are expected to scan every item on every endcap under UPCS to see if it's on sale so we can then add them to a batch to be printed, scanned and hung later? I know some individual signs arrive in the bundles of signs for the store but not nearly enough to cover all that are on sale in the entire store. Especially not when you consider how often our endcaps change and that the sent signs are printed up way in advance. Worst is the signs that go to endcaps they aren't tied to at all. We have an incredible amount of product on endcaps that just had generic labels printed for them so we can put them there, but there's no POG tied to that endcap. What would be the best way to locate those locations quickly at the end of the night when they are all getting scanned in and hung? Create a batch for every endcap when I'm going around scanning them all?
It also says when a 4' endcap is on promotion to use a 3' information flip book and center it. I thought we used to have or still did have 4' information flip books. Am I wrong/confused about that? It was always encouraged/pushed that we shouldn't use 3' headers on 4' endcaps unless you were completely out of 4' headers. Even then most of the time people would end up using a 3' information flip book and then one of the smaller 1' flip books just so no empty space was shown.
One curious thing in the booklet was where it showed a single price point 3' endcap of vacuum cleaners that had the information flip book displaying EMPL instead of LPP. It said earlier that LPP wasn't to be used in A&A, Savor Spot and sidecaps. Does that imply those are the only areas it's not to be used or there are more? Or does it mean that EMPL and LPP can both be used in the same sections of the store on non promotional end caps and if so how do I know when EMPL is expected? Really confused here if you can't gather.
In the specialty fixtures part of the booklet it shows the glass shelves we now have on a few of our cosmetics endcaps. Currently our labels are underneath the glass shelf several inches further back from the edge of the shelf in a dark grey plastic label strip. The strip holder is basically a piece of plastic folded in half stickied to the endcap. It's so thick and pushed back you can't see the prices even if you hunch down and know where to look. The labels are attached to this ugly holder like stickers themselves on the inside. In the book it has them attached with 1x3' label holders, that look like the ones on peg locations, if the shelf has multiple price points and a 3x5 label holder if the shelf is all the same price point. Which exact fixtures should we be using and is there a good reason we wouldn't have them the way they are in the book? As it is we have cosmetic endcaps that look to have no prices on them. I can't imagine how some people push those endcaps like that or what customers must thing when they're shopping, but my concern is with no label holders I have nothing to hang my sign on. Do I grab an empty one and attach that just for the items on sale and remove the entire label holder when the sale is done? Before when the endcap went on sale we'd make a multi item 7x11 and put it in a stand holder and call it a day.
Another specialty fixture it mentions is the bulk shelved and unshelved endcaps. Typically for stuff like paper towels and soda which they used for their examples of each. It states for shelved bulk endcaps you use an 11x11 for promotion. The only problem we have with that is sometimes when those endcaps get pushed they're pushed quite full and trying to hang a 7x11 on the shelf in the middle usually means a broken 7x11 holder for your trouble. When such an endcap is pushed completely full am I to remove the offending piece of product to make room for the sign to hang down and not be basically folded in half? If so does that apply to our vendor soda endcaps? If so can I stack the soda higher than the middle shelf the sign is hanging from if there's nowhere else to put it? We don't backstock that so where else might it put it if I am to make room and it's that full?
It then tells you that for Fan Central you put the signs in the 7x11 peg sign holder towards the top of the gondola. Are there other areas where it's ok to put 7x11 peg sign holders that high on a panel? I ask because we have some specific locations in the store like the floor mat/rug aisle that doesn't have the normal standard shelves. It has what I guess I'd call baskets or rails that the floor mats sit in and those aren't made for 7x11 holders to clip on to.
In the section for Food signing it shows the meat bunker with red sign fixture similar to the ones on the top of sidecaps and check lane endcaps. Ours doesn't have that fixture. It says for S04 SuperTarget Stores only and while I have no idea what that means, I do know our store has a meat coffin with no fixture to hold the little letter flip books like our check lane endcaps do.
In the cooler/freezer endcap cases it says to use individual 3x5s which we actually were doing but there has been some confusion on whether to fold the flags on them. (I have been but some others have not) I believe this came about because of the problem with folding them in other glass cases in the store where the door was too close and it was hitting the signs when it was being slid open and closed. This doesn't apply here for 2 reasons. The doors swing out instead of sliding and even when closed they're farther away from the signs and not touching. Is it definitive that we should be folding them as I have been saying all along? (there's a picture in there that shows them all folded and even after seeing that people are being allowed to not fold them in that area.)
For our Bike signs it says not to place them on the rail but to insert them into the plastic pouches that hang from the handlebars. My question here is: Is there an easy way to scan a large number of items at once and have it make a batch for ONLY the items on promotion? What I mean is can I do something in my PDA so I can just scan every Bike one after the other without having to hit any extra buttons and then go and print signs for all the bikes that are now on sale? This would apply and save time for the select items on all those endcaps too. I'm praying this exists because using UPCS and adding each item one by one to my batches is soooooo time consuming. If it doesn't exist then Target needs to program that in there. Shouldn't be too hard. You only need it to ask you a question if there's multiple or overlapping promotions that apply to the product the same as when it asks if you want the TPC or Sale sign when you're adding them manually.
Continued below due to 10,000 character limit.
